midsummer refrain
by electrikitty
Summary: prince bruno earned his reputation with the violin with skill, talent, and countless years of practice, yet is his music of any real value to himself, or others? / the royal tutor / one-shot


**Midsummer Refrain**

 _And it came to pass… that David took a harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well…_

 _1 Samuel 16:23_

* * *

Music soothes the soul. Yet the art of playing never soothed me; how could it, when I treated it as a science and a skill to acquire?

The trees and sky are painted in bright summer hues, framed by my open window, bearing spring's promise of the warmth and vibrancy of summer that is soon to come. It's been getting warmer. It's that heady, golden time of year that feels refreshing on one hand, but makes you wish that you didn't have to wear military dress uniform every day on the other. The curtains lap at the edges of my desk like pale sea foam on the sandy wood, and I set down my pen for a moment.

The air feels heavy, and still. It's likely that a storm is blooming on the horizon, hidden by the dense skyline and trees surrounding the palace.

Even sitting back in my chair and taking a breath reminds me of the buttoned and pressed clothes fitted too perfectly to my frame. I sigh. It's almost too silent. The kind of silence that seeps into your skin, pleading for something to soak it up.

I shift, and ease one leg between the gap between my chair and the desk, and glance over my shoulder.

At the violin case that rests on the sideboard.

It's not a hard choice.

I slip from my chair and pad across the carpet to the violin. It resides in a gleaming, enamelled wooden case inlaid with wire ornamentation. I raise the lid. The violin gleams in the light, its body glowing a rich gold against the velvet.

Something stirs in my breast, a faint, flickering feeling. An ache to hear the sound of its strings. It takes me a moment to identify the sensation, so unfamiliar it is.

I always came back to the violin out of duty, to practice and perfect my skills and further my musical studies. Yet now I only play occasionally, to maintain my skill or learn newly published pieces. Looking at the instrument now, I don't know if I ever truly felt the desire to simply play, for playing's sake alone.

Almost cautiously, I lift the violin from its case. A Stradivarius, exquisitely crafted. A crown jewel of the musical world. Despite its obvious material value, it's also inherently beautiful. In the sculpting of the wood, its curves, in the harmony and symmetry of its design.

I weigh the instrument in my hands, my gloved hands… then set it down so that I can take my gloves off.

It was Heine, I think, that gave me the idea. It was a winter evening, and we were reviewing music history. The palace had just received a pile of new sheet music from various orchestras and composers. I didn't think to even look at them, yet Heine sifted through the pile, spread some of the pages across a music stand, and set his coat aside.

I was aware of his talent and skill with music, of course. But the sheer elegance of each movement as he picked up a violin and tuned it, let alone when he actually touched the bow to the strings and began to play.

 _You play beautifully_ , I remember saying.

He glanced at me, not missing a note. _Really?_ A half-smile. _Tis through no small effort on my part, I must admit._

 _But you're so talented_ , I said.

 _No, Highness, I'm not._ His eyes flickered over the sheet music, the notes falling like glass plates over their black, inked counterparts. _I could not so much as read Gherman at your age, let alone sheet music. I could coax a somewhat pleasant sound out of a fiddle if I had the chance, like a child scraping the bow over the strings, and that was it. I had to practice long and hard to play with any degree of proficiency._

 _As did I_ , I admit. _I had to slave over pieces, over the score, until it was burnt into my memory._

Heine played the final notes of the piece, and the music slowed. I expected him to stop, as he'd played through all the sheet music on the stand. Yet the bow hesitated on the strings for a moment.

Then he turned his back on the stand, and with the bow held aside, touched his fingers to the strings.

The room shifted like someone had snapped a switch.

Sharp pizzicato notes twanged under his fingers, simmering with heat, and we were whirled away from the palace in an instant. The sultry notes he picked out in a blur conjured a night of fire and smoke, of clinking silver coins and gypsy caravans. His entire being was focused solely on the strings and a fierce concentration lit his eyes, because he was playing by nothing more than sheer memory alone, making sounds I'd never heard anything the likes of before.

The music followed a barely restrained rhythm, of metallic notes snapped out with his finger tips, then dipped and in a rush, swapped to legato and exploded into flame.

The music's rhythm was so strong that I could hear the percussive beat ringing in my ears in time with the rich, pleading strains. Heine moved and followed the instrument's leading, yielding his body to every note and beat and pull of the bow, the sheer opposite of how I played myself. He passed me and the fireplace outlined him in gold and amber like a crack of lightning, and it was only then that I realised he was… dancing.

So absorbed in the music, body and soul, that it ran through him like quicksilver in his veins, like golden puppet strings sewn through his skin in stitches of gold and diamond thread. Surrendering to the music, embracing it… expressing himself through it — that's what he was doing.

His feet moved as fast as the rhythm, marking elaborate, invisible patterns in sharp steps and spins. The violin sang under his touch, like starlight, so sweet and high in pitch as to be heartbreaking, speaking of love and loss under a different sky, before falling as a single note that quivered, hung, and was still.

Heine closed his eyes. Exhaled. Then touched the bow to the strings, and let a blend of pizzicato and legato notes fall like a quiet summer rain on a grey street. I couldn't recognise the piece. It was merely fragments of sound and unwritten songs.

 _What… What are you playing now?_ I whispered.

Heine glanced at me. A hint of amusement lit his expression. _Now I'm just making it up._

Making it up. Those three words sounded like a foreign language to me at the time.

The final notes dripped and pattered against the carpet, and faded to silence.

Heine took the violin from his arm and held it loosely, the tip of the bow resting against the carpet.

I touched my fingertips together, then applauded until my hands stung. _Brilliant, Master! That was incredible!_

He didn't smile, yet the edges of his eyes crinkled slightly. _A little excessive, Prince_ , he said, as he placed the violin back within its case. He touched his cuff to his brow, and I realised his chest was rising and falling in an effort to catch his breath, and his brow was damp with perspiration. To play with such passion as to exhaust yourself… it was something I'd never seen before.

 _No, it was incredible, truly. I've never heard anything like it_.

He took a seat at my side. _Well, I'd heard many folk pieces, especially in Wienner, when I was growing up. Truthfully, I was merely improvising at the end._

 _Improvising?_

That earned me a confused look, yet Heine's expression quickly softened. _Yes, improvising. I'd heard the pieces, yet I couldn't recall some parts. So I made it up. That or I simply did as I wished with the original score and played it how I wanted._ He rested a hand on his chest, the firelight flickering over his face. He must have completely spent himself. He played with so much passion, almost more than his tiny frame could hope to contain.

 _I had no concept of music when I was a child_ , Heine said. _I even wondered how people knew which notes to play, and what order you were meant to play them in._ He chuckled. _It was like starting from the ground up, learning chords and melodies and breaking my back learning set pieces until I could play with a reasonable measure of success, by general standards._

He flexed his fingers, and mimed the draw of a bow. _Yet that feeling of merely trying to reach a sound, or making music simply for the sake of it… It was even more of a pleasure to come back to that once I understood how to create the sounds I was looking for. Hence the improvisation._

As he gestured, I noticed deep red marks etched into his fingertips, and out of reflex I caught his hand in mine _._

Heine raised his eyebrows, then glanced at his fingers. _Oh. It's been a while since I've played. When I practiced regularly, I had proper violinist's calluses._

I looked at my own gloved hands. _I see, but… why wouldn't you just wear gloves?_

He laced his marred fingers together and rested them in his lap. _Well…_ _I like the feel of it._ At my disturbed expression, he clarified. _The sensation of the strings against your fingers. The warmth of the wood against your shoulder. It feels more… intimate. It's hard to play from the heart when you put so much distance between yourself and what you're playing._

I stared at the violin. Intimacy? Music simply for music's sake? For the sound, and the expression of yourself rather than mechanical perfection of the score and adherence to the composer's intentions?

I was struggling to grasp the concept. _But so much emphasis is placed on following the score…_

 _For a reason. Sheet music is how we learn to play what others have written, and it guides our fingers as we play. Adhering to the composer is a way of showing respect. Yet they wrote their score to teach us how to play their music, not to dictate how we should play it. Being able to play a set piece note-for-note is a measure of incredible skill and dedication. Yet music is also a way of expressing oneself. And it soothes the soul._

He smiled, tiredly, but with genuine warmth. _And besides. Learning to play set pieces is important, but people have to imagine and compose the music before sheet music can be written, don't they?_

I stared at him, then at the flames in the fireplace, considering everything he said. _But I don't think I know how to improvise. Nor play for myself._

 _Then why don't you learn?_

 _But what if I make a mistake?_

 _It's your music. You're the one composing it, so how can you make mistakes? It's yours to play as you wish._

The words echo in my ears, still lingering from that winter night. The faint clink of silver coins and pizzicato notes fades as I put my thoughts aside for the time being.

I gaze at the violin for a moment, then unbutton my jacket and set it aside, before taking up the instrument.

It feels different. The glossed surface of the wood against my bare palms, and the sharp dig of the violin's body into my collarbone, no longer padded by the shoulder of my jacket. I tune the strings in alternating raindrops of sound, like icicles dripping and melting away.

I rest my index finger against the bow; tilt my head against the violin and find the perfect angle, then draw the bow against the strings.

The rich sound floods my senses, overwhelmingly loud in my ears. Playing instruments that rest so close to your head means you hear the sound with overwhelming emphasis and volume; it drives you to craft the perfect sound because you can hear every facet and undertone in each vibration of the strings.

 _'_ What to play?' I muse.

The thought of improvising still scares me a little bit, akin to looking over the edge of a bottomless precipice. _What if I make a mistake?_ I sigh, with a weary smile. 'It's your music; you decide what's right or wrong. Get it together, man.'

I rest the bow against the strings, cycling through songs and pieces in my head. And I begin to play.

Notes fill the air — Vivaldi's 'The Four Seasons.' Only fitting to play 'Spring' given the time of year, but I'm more drawn to the mood of the more pensive 'No. 2 Largo' than the 'No. 1 Allegro' as I play, and I find myself slipping from the former to the latter and mingling strains of 'No. 3, Danza Pastorale' as I do.

Familiar pieces, ones that I drilled into myself as a child. Yet coming back to them without the chaperone of sheet music feels freeing, and feels good: an easy familiarity.

I play Pachelbel's 'Canon in D' next, finding untouched reserves of joy and sweet longing that I'd missed the first time around. I draw on it, and on what's in my own heart, drawing out some notes and dwelling on others.

 _Heine was right_ , I think, as I play. _Music truly does soothe the soul._

I play the notes of Bach's 'Orchestral Suite #3,' taking the time to linger. I remember that Heine also said something else, when we were covering music history and the succession of famed composers.

 _Some say that music is the law of the universe, ordained and blessed by God himself. A mirror of his values and laws, a representation of perfection and harmony. Composers who followed the Lord composed pieces that were in tune with these laws, whereas modern composers who joined humanistic trends composed pieces that were dissonant, reflections of their troubled souls._

It caught my interest, and I asked him whether he believed that himself. He looked out the window, with a half-smile on his face, and said, _Music is such a beautiful gift. Isn't it hard to believe that something so perfect came from any source other than one divine?_

And I think I'm finally beginning to see the truth in what he said.

Feeling the notes and melodies fall into perfect place, sweet sounds effortlessly woven together in meter and measurements, yet expressed in so many different facets, it's stunning.

It truly stretches the imagination to think that this ordered beauty could be a random act.

I hesitate, drawing out this note for as long as I can, then I finally let go. I play a series of simple notes and scales. Then I let my fingers and bow do what they will on the strings, hesitatingly, haltingly at first, then slipping into notes and chords and melodies, like threading pearls on a necklace.

I can't remember the last time my heart felt this light. I savour each note, playing whatever I wish, however I want it to sound. Drawing on whatever I want to, memories and emotions, pain and joy, seeping from my touch into the strings, and bleeding together to create something that has a sense of beauty.

I laugh, and dip into Mozart's 'Eine Kleine Nachtmusik,' abruptly changing tone and playing on the lively melody, enjoying the quick sensation, teasing vibrato and tremolo out of the strings. Without my realising it, my feet have taken me on a path across the room, in a waltz with the violin as my partner.

I drift to a halt by the window, relishing the fresh air against my skin as I work the bow in a blur of movement. My fingers are aching, and oh so sore — but I know I won't be able to play again afterwards from sheer exhaustion, so I want to enjoy it as long as I can.

As I dance through the final notes, I look out the window. You never have a chance to truly enjoy yourself while reading sheet music. Not with the free abandon that you can while playing from memory or from the heart. My eyes wander over the view, and the windowsill presses against my leg, as I'm close enough to the window to touch it, and as such I notice something at the edge of my vision, below the window, and it takes me several full seconds to realise that it's none other than Eins, sitting below the window.

My mental processes crash to a halt and my fingers follow suit a split-second later, thereby massacring the closing flourishes of 'Eine Kleine Nachtmusik' with the most horrific screech I've ever produced with a stringed instrument in my life.

It startles Eins so much that he cracks his head against the wall. He swears, in the filthiest Gherman you could imagine. He rubs his head, wincing, and turns around.

I freeze. Violin in one hand and bow in the other. I finally manage to get a greeting past my teeth. 'Elder… brother?'

He still looks aggrieved and on the verge of doing someone bodily harm, but he nods in reply. 'Bruno. And what was that d_ awful noise?'

'Forgive me, I was not aware you were… here. There, I mean. I was startled to see you.'

Eins gets up. I notice that he's not wearing his usual heavy winter coat: he's wearing a vest and shirtsleeves, with his coat folded under one arm instead. He turns to face me and rests his elbows on the windowsill. He opens his mouth to speak, but I recklessly — still high on emotion from playing for so long — cut in before I can think better of it.

'You should make your presence known, for your own safety if nothing else.' I lay the violin in the desk, and place the bow beside it. 'So? Did you require me for something? My apologies for keeping you waiting,' yet my tone doesn't sound overly apologetic.

I'm surprised that he didn't merely interrupt me in the middle of playing. Or he could have just reached through the window and yanked me over to talk to him, for that matter.

Eins raises an eyebrow. Then rests a hand on my head, tousling my hair with a heavy touch in the same manner he used to when we were children. 'My. Such indifference.'

I nearly flinch, but his words inadvertently drive the point home. Choosing my responses to him based on what he could say to me is pointless. And I'm never going to surpass him if he's the standard that I weigh myself by.

The idea is so sharp that it surprises me. It sends a cool shiver down my spine.

I give him a wry smile, and reach to push his hand away. 'Indifferent or no, if you didn't need me, then I'll return to my playing—'

But he seizes the opening while my guard is down, taking my hand and examining my bruised, red fingers. On closer inspection, one or two digits are actually bleeding a little. '…Play with gloves, little brother. Bleeding on a Stradivarius is an insult to the craftsman.'

'Is it not rather a testimony of the violinist's passion?'

Eins raises his eyebrows, but merely scoffs at my romantic words. 'I'm sure. But truly. I can't imagine how you could return to your playing when you're so spent that your fingers are bleeding and you can hardly stand upright.' He tilts his head. 'Pray tell, why this foolishness?'

'I think you overstep yourself to classify another musician's methods as foolishness.' I touch the wounds on my fingertips, grimacing slightly, but still with a half-smile on my face.

'Indifferent and standing up for yourself. Are you sure you're my brother?' he says.

I stiffen and open my mouth to retort, but he sighs, touching a finger to my lips, shushing me.

'It suits you.'

Thunder cracks above, and the skies promptly open and pour rain. It falls in misty sheets around us, the two of us sheltered by the balcony above our heads.

'…Thank you? I think?'

Eins lifts his hand from my head, and leans against the wall, one arm on the window frame, watching the downpour. 'I was listening to your practicing.'

'You were?'

'Is that so surprising? Besides, you left your window open.' He takes my measure, his eyes roaming my body and the instrument at my side with that same uncomfortable intensity that I've always felt from him. 'It was… enjoyable.'

'What?!'

He ignores my disbelieving outburst. 'Your tone when you play is somewhat better than I recall. More mature. Yet even given all those years of practice, I don't think they helped you improve. Not to cause such a sudden change.'

'Perhaps. I certainly placed great value on adhering to the score in my studies. yet I didn't discover or attempt to use emotion in my playing.' I open my mouth to tell him that it was Professor Heine, as usual, who helped me discover a new way of doing things. Then I realise — before the words leave my lips, for once — that it would tick him off. And therefore I take great delight in saying it.

'Professor Heine showed me his own playing, and I was inspired to try playing in a more improvisational manner.'

And sure enough, I see a flicker of irritation cross his features. I choke back a laugh.

'I see,' he says. 'I'll hazard a guess — he played some gypsy ballad from wherever he hails from for you. Hardly a measure of skill.'

I resist the urge to sag against the window frame. If only he knew. I rest my head on my hand, and say, 'And yet it takes so much skill to play a prewritten piece? What of those that compose music for themselves?' And for once, I take my eyes off him. 'Regardless, playing music simply for pleasure can be soothing, no?'

I look back — to see something similar to regret. 'To think you can come close to out-arguing me after so short a time under his instruction. It seems you've found a role-model for yourself.'

It highlights in contrast for the first time what we could have been. We spent very little time together as children, and as we grew older he became my rival. It feels strange, as though looking at a different future, to see what we could have been together.

I hold his gaze. 'Well, I can hardly have you as my role-model if my aim is to surpass you, can I?'

And the moment the words leave my mouth, I realise that I'm the one who overstepped oneself, and I panic. _Oh no. That didn't come out right. He's going to take it wrong, why did I have to say anything, oh cr—_

'No.' He chuckles, a harsh sound, and rests his palms on the windowsill. 'Certainly not.'

And he grasps my jaw with gloved fingers, forcing my gaze to meet his. 'Hate me all you want, little brother. But if you want to surpass someone, you have to learn what it is that makes them succeed — no matter how it may clash with your lofty morals — and master it for yourself.'

I can't tear my eyes away.

'Court and politics are cruel to young, innocent ones like you. I'll be interested to see how long you can retain your innocence if you intend to beat me at my own game.'

I narrow my eyes. 'If I wish to retain my innocence, then it seems that all I have to do is look at your actions and do the opposite, and I'll have an easy template to follow.'

I realise a touch too late that he could very well snap my neck in this position, if he were so inclined.

He laughs. And lets me go. 'Interesting. I look forward to seeing how that works out for you—'

'Prince Eins? Prince Eins!'

Eins looks over his shoulder, swears, and without warning vaults over the windowsill and lands beside me with a crash.

'What the d—'

He covers my mouth with his hand and pulls the curtains shut. 'Shh.' He casts a glare at the sunlight filtering in through the drapes.

It's strange. I would have expected being pressed up against him to feel like touching a marble statue — hard and full of sharp angles. But it doesn't. If anything, a faint warmth seeps through his clothing, and the hand that he holds over my mouth is gentle.

Am I imagining it?

' _Prince Eins!_ '

I recognise the voice as belonging to Count Rosenberg, and said voice sounds _extremely_ aggravated.

I prise Eins' fingers from my face and whisper, 'What are you doing here at the palace, anyway?'

'Meetings with the council.' Eins watches the shadows flickering on the curtains, eyes narrowed. 'Grandmother requested that I visit, as I had time to fill in, but our father heard that I was here and asked to see me. And to twist the knife, he told Rosenberg to bring me to him.'

'I don't quite understand why Father gets on your nerves to such an extent—'

Eins gives me a look. 'And what reaction did you have to me showing up at your window?'

'I…'

I probably shouldn't put that into words, I think.

'Then you should know that some family members can be a pain in the a—'

The curtains snap open to reveal Count Rosenberg, and he does _not_ look happy. 'Eins, I have a good mind to— Oh, Prince Bruno. Good afternoon.'

I nod, taming my dislike for the man into something resembling civility, and say, 'Good afternoon.'

'Anyway—' Rosenberg snatches Prince Eins' wrist and pulls him back over to the window. '—could you please stop running away?! One would think that you were your younger brother Prince Leonhard—'

'I am not running away!' Eins snaps.

'Only because I have you by the arm, you d_ed idiot!' Ernst snaps right back.

And then they both recall that I'm standing right next to them. An awkward silence follows.

'A word of advice, little brother,' Eins says. 'Don't hire friends of the family as staff; they have a blasted habit of presuming that they can tell you off.'

Rosenberg tightens his hold, and smirks at me. 'I'm charmed; I've been reduced to an object lesson.'

Suddenly, Eins jerks backwards and breaks Rosenberg's grip on his arm, and strides towards the door. 'I've had enough of this. Ernst, tell my father exactly where he can put his invitation—'

The door swings open to reveal Professor Heine standing in the doorway. 'Ah. Prince. I mean, Princes. In the plural. And Count Rosenberg as well. Good afternoon?'

Eins weighs up the situation, then says to me, 'Good day, little brother,' and obviously decides that Heine isn't a sufficient obstacle to bar escaping out the door because he dives past — nearly knocking Heine over — and he rounds the corner and streaks off down the hall.

Rosenberg vaults over the windowsill and sprints past me, yelling, ' _D_ you, Prince, get back here!_ ' and Heine has the good sense to leap out of his way as Rosenberg runs past and takes the corner, sparks flying from his shoes, and they're gone.

Heine and I stare at each other, both of us unconsciously clinging to a bookcase and the desk respectively in an attempt to prevent being blown away.

I laugh, a touch embarrassed, and step out from behind the desk. 'Good afternoon, Master. Were you looking for me?'

Heine hands me a sheaf of paper, still keeping one eye on the door. 'I just came to return one of your theses. I take it that was Prince Eins?'

'Apparently? Oh, and Master — I tried playing without sheet music as you suggested, and it was glorious and you're a genius and I—'

Heine heads me off. 'That's wonderful, Prince. I'm truly happy for you.' Yet he looks at me, with concern on his face. 'Forgive my rudeness, but… may I ask what he said to you?'

Ah. My prior clashes with Eins are likely what's prompting his concern. He could even be worried that Eins could have come here with ill intentions in mind.

I smile, looking at my bruised fingertips. 'Oh, he was telling me to stop bleeding all over my Stradivarius.'

Heine looks somewhat thrown. He adjusts his glasses, casts a skeptical glance at the violin on my desk, and my fingers, then realises I'm telling the truth. 'Well,' he says with a shrug. 'How big brotherly of him.'

I touch the glossy surface of the violin and take it over to the case, carefully packing it away. For all the ups and downs of the conversation, the remaining notes that linger feel light, and refreshing. Like a different version of a well-known song.

'Yes,' I say. I smile. 'Indeed.'

 _The End_

* * *

 **A/N:** Reviews welcome, and thanks for reading!


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